


Sometimes

by ERNest



Series: Gold Into Rotted Straw [5]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Episode: s02e16 The Miller's Daughter, Gen, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-19
Updated: 2013-06-19
Packaged: 2017-12-15 11:02:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/848771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ERNest/pseuds/ERNest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cora wonders what could have been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sometimes

Sometimes Cora wonders. She holds a crying baby in her arms and wonders what it would feel like to have more than a familial obligation towards the infant. She imagines it would be more than the annoyance she feels at the noise and the smell, which means it would hurt her more.

Sometimes Cora wonders. She spins straw into gold because she can, and considers the molecular exchange that would be necessary to turn it back into straw. It’s such a ridiculous thought that she wonders why she spent any time on it, since it will neither make her happy nor teach her to love.

Sometimes Cora wonders. Her daughter learns to walk in shoes with heels, unsteady as a colt at pasture, and she thinks that perhaps she should have been there when a toddler took her first steps in this world. But she was busy that day, making the kingdom kneel deeper to them both.

Sometimes Cora wonders. Her magic catches hold of a headstrong teenager to keep her in her place, and she wonders what it might be like to hold her that tightly in a hug. This takes little energy, and an embrace would hurt her arms, so it’s just as well that she doesn’t bother.

Sometimes Cora wonders. She looks through records and genealogies to figure out who she needs to kill to get her daughter the perfect husband to make her queen, and wonders what it might have been like to spend her days with the only man who ever made her happy. It doesn’t matter, because she can’t think of why exactly she was so happy with him.

Sometimes Cora wonders. She watches a foolish girl’s face crumple along with her lover’s heart and thinks of how it might have shined if his heart had any light left. But what the girl wants is not what she needs in the long run, so she’s doing the child a favor.

Sometimes Cora wonders. As Regina’s son, she makes her way into to the center of the spider’s web and wonders if she will ever receive that same look when she is her mother. It hardly matters, as long as she ends up with the dagger by the end of this.

Sometimes Cora wonders. She gasps and turns to her daughter, seeing her for the first time and thinks of how beautiful a lifetime of this “enough” might have been. But it turns out that her heart really was enough to kill her and she has to settle for the false life that flashes before her eyes.


End file.
